Pompeo Gherardo Molmenti

Molmenti on a photograph that was taken in 1908 at the latest

Pompeo Gherardo Molmenti (born September 1, 1852 in Venice , † January 24, 1928 in Rome ) was an Italian historian, politician and writer.

Life

Molmenti's father, Ettore, was a Friulian who moved to Venice in the early 1840s and his mother, Lucietta Regazzi, was Ettore's second wife. Pompeo Gherardo was the second of five children. He first attended the after connecting the Veneto region of Italy in 1867, so named Marco Polo School (San Trovaso) in Sestiere San Polo , more specifically Ginnasio liceale "Marco Polo" in order to study law at the University of Padua take that he graduated on August 5, 1874. There he met Luigi Luzzatti , with whom he had a long friendship. Francesco Pantaleo had taught him Greek and Latin and through him he got to know the authors of the 13th and 14th centuries. His uncle, the painter Pompeo Marino Molmenti , his father's younger brother, had introduced him to art and art history. Although Molmenti was more interested in art and culture, he worked as a lawyer from 1876.

In 1880 he began to give readings at the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti at Campo Santo Stefano, then he taught at the Marco Foscarini grammar school from 1881 to 1890. He also wrote articles in various newspapers, such as Il Fanfulla , which gave him a separate column in 1875 for which he wrote “Chiacchiere veneziane” as “sior Momolo”. From 1877 he wrote about painting in the Milanese newspaper Perseveranza , a topic that Molmenti had written about for the first time in 1869 in Il Rinnovamento , a Venetian magazine.

On April 22, 1885, he married Amalia Brunati, an educated and wealthy woman from Salò , who brought a villa in Moniga del Garda into the marriage. The two cultivated their own wine there, the Chiaretto . As early as 1876, Molmenti was a member of the Associazione costituzionale di Venezia , the chairman of which was Lorenzo Tiepolo , who in 1888 became the city's first elected but not appointed mayor. Molmenti sat as consigliere comunale in the city council, then in the Camera dei deputati , but lost his seat in parliament in the election of 1892, to which he only returned in 1895 in a Catholic-moderate faction and to which he belonged until 1909. In 1897 he fell out with Mayor Filippo Grimani . In 1889 he became a lecturer at the University of Padua with a focus on Venetian history , but he gave up this post when he was elected to parliament. In 1909 he was promoted to senator. From 1921 he was a member of the Accademia della Crusca .

Works

At the age of 14 Molmenti published his first historical novel of 20 pages in Verona: Il Castello di Zumelle. Romanzo storico . Maria appeared in 1873 . Bozzetti della campagna veneta , Impressioni letterarie in 1872 and 1879 , Clara in 1875 and a study of Carlo Goldoni in Milan , and finally in 1900 a monograph on the writer Antonio Fogazzaro , whom he had met himself. In 1905 L'arte di vivere a lungo followed. Discorsi della vita sobria di Luigi Cornaro , then the Epistolari veneziani del secolo XVIII in 1915 and the Carteggi casanoviani in two volumes, published in 1916 and 1918.

Molmenti also wrote historical novels around Venice, such as Vecchie storie (1882), Il Moro di Venezia in 1878 and Abate Brandolini the following year. He became better known with La dogaressa di Venezia , which was published in 1884 and 1887, and which was also published in English in 1887.

Illustration from Molmenti's Le isole della Laguna veneta

In 1887 he published an article in the Nuova Antologia di scienze, lettere ed arti with the title Delendae Venetiae , in which he defended the historical buildings against disfigurement and destruction. This contribution was directed primarily against local politics. Molmenti defended cultural heritage for a lifetime and also opposed the export of art treasures. In 1905 Venezia appeared , his life theme to which he devoted himself again and again, as in 1910 with Le isole della Laguna veneta . In 1917 he turned to the history of smuggling with Il contrabbando sotto la Repubblica Veneta . During the First World War he polemicized against the exaggerated and sometimes destructive efforts to protect the cultural heritage of Venice.

After his wife died in February 1911, he married Lodovica Palazzi († 1958) on August 18, 1913. From 1914 to 1916 Molmenti was president of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti . Even today, prizes for culturally outstanding work are awarded under his name (Premio Pompeo Molmenti). On September 24, 1919 he was appointed sottosegretario alle belle arti . He should ensure that the works of art that had been brought to safety during the war or disappeared in other ways, returned to their original place. He was also responsible for moving the Museo Correr from its location in the Fondaco dei Turchi to the Palazzo Reale to the Procuratie Nuove.

Molmenti initially hoped that the fascists would bring about a more stable state order, but he soon distanced himself. Finally, he signed Benedetto Croce's anti-fascist manifesto of 1925.

Molmenti died in Rome in early 1928 after drawing up his will on June 28, 1927. He bequeathed his books and works of art as well as his personal notes to the city of Venice. His letters are in ten busts in the Museo civico Correr.

Works (selection)

• La dogaressa di Venezia , Turin 1884 ( digitized version )
• La storia di Venezia nella vita privata dalle origini alla caduta della repubblica , 3 vols., 2nd expanded edition, Turin 1880 ( The Venetians. History and private life from the foundation to the fall of the republic , Hamburg 1886).
• Venezia , Bergamo 1905. ( digitized version )
• Venice, its Individual Growth from the Earliest Beginnings to the Fall of the Republic , Chicago 1906.
• Il contrabbando sotto la Repubblica Veneta , Venice 1917.

literature

• Monica Donaglio: Il difensore di Venezia. Pompeo Molmenti fra idolatria del passato e pragmatismo politico , in: Venetica XIII (1996) pp. 45-72.
• Monica Donaglio: Un esponente dell'élite liberale. Pompeo Molmenti politico e storico di Venezia , Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, Venice 2004.
• Maria Giovanna Sarti:  Momenti, Pompeo Gherardo. In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 75:  Miranda – Montano. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2011.

Web links

Commons : Pompeo Gherardo Molmenti  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Publications by Molmenti in the Opac of the Regesta Imperii
• Entry in the Senatori dell'Italia liberale database of the Historical Archives of the Italian Senate
• Entry in the Portale storico of the Camera dei deputati

Remarks

1. ↑ Membership catalog of the academy
2. ^ M. Favilla: Delendae Venetiae, La citta e le sue trasformazioni del XIX al XX secolo , Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Venice 2006.